Category Archives: News

JWIL mourns the loss of Kamau Brathwaite, one of Caribbean poetry’s giants and a lodestar for so many of us Caribbean literary scholars. His contributions to the urgent and continuing project of decolonization continue to awe, move and inspire legions.

It is with heavy hearts that we announce the passing of one of our own, our longstanding Editor, colleague and friend, Dr. Victor Chang. Dr. Chang dedicated himself to JWIL‘s life and influence for over twenty years, serving first as Co-Editor from 1987-2002 and then as Editor-in-Chief from 2002-2009. Dr. Chang also provided the University of the West Indies, Mona campus, and its Department of Literatures in English with distinguished and dedicated service for thirty-two years. From 1990-1994, he served on the Executive of the University of the West Indies Publisher’s Association, a position in which he further facilitated the publication of Caribbean scholarly work. Dr. Chang was also a Co-Editor of CARIB, and was a Guest Editor of the Caribbean Quarterly issue “The Chinese in the Caribbean”, and Kunapipi XIV.2 (1992). He also helped provide a much needed outlet for writers of fiction and poetry during his twenty-five-year stint as Editor of Pathways, a journal of creative writing. Dr. Chang’s academic career was characterized by involvement with the wider community and beyond having served as a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Hull, England in 1981, carried out assignments with the Ministry of Education in Jamaica and Jamaica Festival. For some 20 years, he was a contributor to the National Association for Teachers of English Workshops and was Assistant Chief Examiner in English Literature with the Caribbean Examinations Council from 1987-1992. He also gave record service to the West Indian Association for Commonwealth Language and Literature Studies (WIACLALS), serving as Chairman from 1994-2006, as Secretary and Treasurer from 2007-2009, and as Secretary from 1981-1992, a total period of twenty-five years. We at JWIL, along with the broader Caribbean literary and academic community, deeply mourn his untimely loss.

JWIL shares in the deep sadness of the broader Caribbean intellectual and cultural community at the passing of Professor J. Michael Dash, who died on 2nd June 2019 in New York City. Born in Trinidad and Tobago and educated at the University of the West Indies, Professor Dash was an eminent scholar of francophone Caribbean literature and in particular of Édouard Glissant, whose work Dash also translated.

Submissions are invited for the 38th Annual West Indian Literature Conference, to take place at the Turkeyen Campus of the University of Guyana, 17-20 October 2019.

The conference theme is “HINTERLANDS: Journeys of the Imagination,” which in the words of the organizers “will include the foundations: some special attention to the heritage(s) of Wilson Harris, Derek Walcott, V.S. Naipaul”; a focus on film and technology; and examinations of the Guyanese experience.

At a handover ceremony on November 22, 2018, author Lawrence Scott gave the archive of papers and materials related to his novel Witchbroom (originally published 1992; re-issued 2017 by Papillote Press) to the Alma Jordan Library at the UWI St. Augustine. The acquisition was also celebrated by an exhibition entitled The Genesis of a Book: Lawrence Scott’s Witchbroom (curator Lorraine Nero, Senior Librarian).

“Listening and Speaking: Postcolonial Circles of Conversation”

In the spirit of postcolonial circles of conversation, we invite papers, panels, roundtables and workshops to reflect on critical, theoretical and creative acts of listening and speaking. What are the conversations that the “postcolonial” has failed to adequately address? What are the silences, gaps or points of erasure in postcolonial circles of conversation? What are the new conversations generated by or beyond the field, in terms of new theoretical crossroads or points of intersection, new forms of alliance, new acts of cross-cultural listening, new comparative mappings, etc.? How do we approach modes of listening in the context of indigenous knowledge (such as notions of “deep listening”)? How does listening occur across species boundaries? How does the aesthetic or creative, more generally, facilitate original modes of listening and speaking?

CACLALS welcomes conference paper or panel proposals that address any aspect of the CFP’s central questions or issues. We also welcome proposals otherwise related to the Association’s broader mandate to examine postcolonial and global literatures.

Proposals of approximately 350 words should be sent by January 15, 2019, as a Word doc. attachment to info@caclals.ca with the subject heading of “CACLALS Proposal at Congress 2019.”

Conference queries should be sent to CACLALS President, Dr. Mariam Pirbhai: info@caclals.ca.

Former Poet Laureate of Jamaica and UWI Professor Emeritus Mervyn Morris was awarded a gold Musgrave Medal for literature by the Institute of Jamaica at a ceremony held Wednesday 10 October. Other literary winners were poet Dr. Jean “Binta” Breeze (silver) and novelist Roland Watson-Grant (bronze).

The Australian Association for Caribbean Studies announces its 2019 conference, “Caribbean Meridians,” to be held 7-9 February 2019 at Western Sydney University in Australia. Keynote speakers will be Patrick Chamoiseau, Alexis Wright, Michael Bucknor, and Anna Cristina Pertierra.

From the editors:

The next biennial Australian Association for Caribbean Studies conferences will be held at Western Sydney University in conjunction with the Australian Research Council funded project Other Worlds. Our theme, Caribbean Meridians, spotlights the ways in which Caribbean worlds are made and the relations and alignments these worlds have with worlds elsewhere. (Please note: proposed papers are not required to address the theme; all topics within Caribbean studies will be considered.)

The conference will feature a landmark collaboration between two preeminent writers from the Caribbean and Australia: Patrick Chamoiseau from Martinique and Alexis Wright from the Waanyi nation of the Gulf of Carpentaria. In the conference’s keynote roundtable, Chamoiseau and Wright will discuss the meridians that align their imaginative worlds. Our other keynote presenters Michael Bucknor and Anna Cristina Pertierra will consider meridians that extend from the Caribbean to Canada and the Philippines, taking in, respectively, the transnational literary world of the Caribbean diaspora and the ways in which the study of transatlantic media and digital technologies can inform thinking in the transpacific world.

The deadline for abstracts is September 30, 2018. All inquiries to aacsconf2019(at)gmail.com or Ben Etherington (b.etherington(at)westernsydney.edu.au).